Mapping China's Growth and Development in the Long Run, 221 BC to 2020

The following sections are included:

• Contents
• About the Author
• Preface

The following sections are included:

• General Focus of the Book
• General Debates on China's Growth Performance
• General Narrative Style of This Book
• How to Define China and China's Historical Periods
• Structure and Thrust of This Book

China has conventionally been portrayed as an old civilisation as well as an empire: It is a civilisation whose origin can be traced back four millennia in written records. However, the history of China as a civilisation was related to, but not identical with China as an empire. China was not the earliest or oldest empire — but it has been the longest lasting. Moreover, the territory and population of the empire fluctuated over time. So, size and longevity is our first point of observation.

China was not an empire until 221 BC when the Qin Kingdom succeeded in achieving two things for the first time in China's history: (1) It unified China through war and conquest, and (2) it implemented a centralised administration known as the ‘prefecture-county system’ (junxian zhi). This was a vital turning point in China's history and put China on a different trajectory — socially, politically, and economically.

Conceptually, laws have always been formal institutions; cultural values and ethics, informal institutions. Customary rules to govern families and clans are semi-formal institutions. Property rights are often considered a paramount economic institution that dictates the growth trajectory of an economy. In essence, institutionalism argues that ‘rules’ determines how the ‘game’ should be played, not the other way round.

Many historians remain puzzled as to how China's empire system was able to fulfil its obligations of providing public goods such as supply of farmland, technical aid, social welfare, external security (or national defence), and internal security (or law and order), with its relatively small state bureaucracy.

The following sections are included:

• General Pattern: Extensive Growth
• Exceptional Population Growth during the Northern Song Period
• Rise of the Lower Yangzi Delta during the Ming
• Territorial and Commercial Growth during the Qing Period
• A Proto-Welfare State of the Qing and Population Growth
• Legacies of the Qing Rule

In the twentieth century, the Westernisation Movement continued to grow under the Republican rule on the mainland until 1949. It was replaced by what essentially was ‘Soviet/Russian learning as the foundation and Soviet/Russian knowledge for utility’ under Mao Zedong, and then by ‘Soviet/Russian learning as the foundation with Chinese characteristics’ under Deng Xiaoping. In offshore Taiwan, the same ‘Chinese learning as the foundation and Western knowledge for utility’ perpetuated, while in Hong Kong the model was ‘Western learning as the foundation and Western knowledge for utility’. China thus ran three system after 1949.

This book aims to take the reader through China's remarkably long and colourful saga of growth and development, full of ups, downs, twists and turns from 221 BC to 2020, thanks to China's exceptionally rich historical records…

The following sections are included:

• Bibliography
• Index